A book I'd rather give to the sea // Review by Ella

Friday, 2 June 2017

Hi there, it's Ella!

Today I'm back with my review for Given to the Sea by Mindy McGinnis, the book I received in my April Fairyloot.

The Plot:

The book tells the story of Khosa, who is born to be the Given, dancing into the sea once she gave birth to a child who is going to be the next Given, just like Khosas mother was before her.
This is to prevent the Kingdom of from a wave like one that once destroyed it.
Vincent is third in throne sequence of this kindom.
The twins Dara and Donil are the last of the magical race of Indiri and adopted by Vincents mother.
Witt is the Lithos, leader of the Pietra, which are about to march on the kingdom of Stille.

The good stuff:

The writing was beautiful and the concept seems interesting. The author said, the character "dancing" to the sea was inspired by a disease called the Restless-Leg-Syndrome.
The chapters were short and the book overall fast to read.

That's it.

Now the bad stuff:

To me it felt like most of the book consisted of dialogues, mostly empty phrase. Khosa having to give birth was the #1 topic, but there was also a lot of talking about sex. "The Lithos is not to be distracted" was a frequent line aswell, but I did not really saw any sense behind it.
The characters consistently repeated themselfes and one another.
They felt flat, except for Dara maybe.

The relationship between the characters sometimes seemed weird.

As for the plot: There wasn't much going on and those things that happened could have fit on maybe a quarter of pages.
Still, it was really confusing. I wasn't completely sure about some important points of the books until half of the book.
Who were all the folks? Why did Pietra send their people off to the sea to die? Why did they kill the Indiri and why are they marching on Stille? (Simple answer: They're warriors. That's their nature. Sure.)

Furthermore, the world felt flat too. Like, the kindom of Stille only consisted of the castle (?) and you rarely met citizens. And there there were a forest, a river and the residence of the Lithos. Oh, and the house whre Khosa lived for like 5 minutes.

The in the Fairyloot box included Fairyscoop with an interview with author said, that Mindy McGinnis wrote linearly, beginning to end without plotting. That's how it felt - one chapter after the other, most seemed without a purpose and some just to fill space.

Overall:

✭✭✩✩✩

I hope this wasn't to short, but I am pretty sure you got a good enough impression of how the book felt to me.
Have you read it yet? What's your opinion on it?
As far as I know, Mindy McGinnis other books are quite good, so am I still motivated to check those out.